


Windu

by Jen425



Series: Influences [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Anakin is a disaster, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Windu fins out that he's wrong again, Windu how the kriff did you survive?, protect him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-05-23 13:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14935529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: Mace Windu is unbeilieving. Anakin Skywalker is broken.What else is new?





	Windu

**Author's Note:**

> Windu's pov changes rather quickly, but... hope is desperate in times like this.
> 
> Anyways, enjoy!

Mace has done it. It’s taken months of planning, but Vader is obviously Skywalker, and a Fallen Skywalker, with his power in the Force…

 

Well, that’s a terrifying thought. He’d checked the footage from the Jedi Temple, after all.

 

And one of the only-known-by-the-Jedi-Council safehouses had recently been used.

 

Damnit! He’d  _ known _ that letting Skywalker on the Council was a terrible, and  _ now  _ look. The Republic and the Order, the very things he’s given his life to, are  _ gone. _

 

And it’s all because of Vader.

 

As Mace makes his way through the Mustafar Castle, however, he starts feeling something… very Light, like it’s engraved in the very stone.

 

He decides to follow it to his source.

  
  
  


Anakin watches from the security room as Windu makes his way towards the secret part of the castle that the Jedi he’d manages to rescue resided in. He’s already made the call to the Knights in there, and the Padawans who honestly should have been knighted by now, but…

 

Well, he’d come to his senses too late, and he would probably die if he tried to fight Sidious in this stupid suit.

 

Which is why he’s waiting for the others to explain to him first, and, hey, with Plo and Windu both here, they could, technically, Knight the Padawans. A Knighting ceremony required at  _ least _ a Padawan’s Master, two members of the Council, and either the Grandmaster or the Master on the Council.

 

_ Technically _ , no one had ever told him that he was  _ off _ of the Council.

  
  
  


“Master Windu?”

 

Mace stares, not fully able to process what he’s seeing.

 

Especially because it looks like a hidden, sheltered, nice-looking, and Light bunker… training room… quarters… thing.

 

“What is this?” He asks.

 

“Hope.”

 

Mace turns around.

 

“Plo?” he asks. This is impossible. Plo had been on the list of confirmed dead. So had every other person in this room.

 

Plo’s face shifts subtly to his species’ equivalent to a smile.

 

“My sons saved me,” he explains, “By their disappearance. I managed, just barely, to dodge their attack. Skywalker found me… about a month ago.”

 

Mace stares.

 

“Skywalker?”

 

It’s Knight A’Li who steps up and answers.

 

“Vader is mostly an illusion,” she explains, “Although… we do know it didn’t start as such.”

 

Mace huffs, slightly clenching the cheap prosthetic he’d managed to get. He didn’t entirely know how Skywalker got from one place to another, but the details were far too easy to put together.

 

“ _ But _ ,” the Knight continues, “He also saved us… and he regrets those that he didn’t… he came to his senses too late for… far too many of us.”

 

“You can’t return from the Dark Side,” Mace says because that is the simple truth, and he doubts that even Skywalker can bend the laws of the Force so completely.

 

“He hasn’t, though,” Padawan Urei SkiLa says, “Well, he has, but… it’s complicated. Right now, pretending to be Vader allows a haven for any Jedi Master Skywalker can find. For instance, we now have about 50 more Jedi than those of us that Master Skywalker rescued from the storming of the Temple.”

  
  
  


At Urei’s words, Anakin decides to make his entrance.

 

“Technically,” he says, his own inflections finally beginning to sound right in Vader’s monotone voice after all these months in the death trap of a suit Sidious had forced him into, “They never did make me a Master, and definitely not now.”

 

Still, though, there are a good thirty or so cries of “Master Skywalker!” at  _ least _ , and about two thirds of that running up to him. The joys of being a favorite and a savior.

 

As if.

 

Still, they’re children. He lets them keep their innocence and illusion as much as is possible with the Jedi Purge impossible to ignore.

 

“Hi,” he says. Honestly, these children are his saving grace. He begins to shift through the crowd of people largely only half his now-even-more-considerable height, “I’m sorry, but Master Windu doesn’t know why we’re all here, and I have to tell him.”

 

All of them whine, but they get out of his way. He makes his way towards the Knights and Senior Padawans and, most importantly, the Masters.

 

“Master Windu,” he says.

 

“Skywalker.”

 

“I made… a very big mistake.”

 

Windu just raises an eyebrow.

 

“I know that,” he says. “Now, explain.”

 

Anakin sighs before gesturing to the door.

 

“Not in here,” he says, “And feel free to keep your ‘saber if you’re as worried as you feel.”

  
  
  


Mace… cannot process this.

 

So, naturally, he starts with the simplest part.

 

“You, Obi-Wan, Senator Amidala, and Duchess Satine?” he asks. Skywalker nods.

 

Not entirely surprising.

 

“Yes,” Skywalker says, “And… we’d honestly been falling apart since we lost Satine, and the war had allowed us no time to grieve or forgive. I… I did terrible things, all due to a desperate urge not to lose Padme as well… naturally, it cost me Obi-Wan and Padme both. I… no harm will come to… any of them, although… there are 149 Jedi living here, and that’s if you stretch and include us both in that number. I… I left the Temple with 92.”

 

Those… those numbers are terrifying, but… well those numbers were officially on the confirmed dead list, as well.

 

Mace sighs.

 

“Someday, Skywalker,” he says, “You’ll find a rule that you can’t break.”

 

A sound that Mace thinks might be a laugh comes from Skywalker.

 

“I doubt that,” he says. “But there are plenty of rules that I can’t un-break.”

 

And Mace wants, more than anything, to be able to wonder why Skywalker has changed.

 

And he hates how much it’s taken to realize that…

 

Yes, Skywalker has failed as a Jedi, and he very clearly could see and admit it, but… well, had they really given him a chance?

 

No. They hadn’t.

 

And, Mace wonders… how far had the shadow of the Sith fallen.

 

Either answer is terrible.

 

Kriff.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [@flaim-ita](https://flaim-ita.tumblr.com/)


End file.
